“If I can’t show up with a story that’s going to make people feel a little better about their life, then I don’t know whose job that is,” the beloved Nashville-based author of Tom Lake and Commonwealth recently told the Times. Her latest follows 53-year-old Daphne, who unexpectedly reconnects with an adored stepfather from her childhood. Patchett plumbs the dynamics and evolution of aging, human connection and complicated family dynamics, delivering the tender emotional warmth she’s known for.

“Whatever happened to the ‘charm novel?’” asks Greer in a note to readers of his escapist new book. “You know, the kind of warm and funny story packed with characters and incidents and descriptions.” Think: Cold Comfort Farm and The Enchanted April meet Merchant Ivory – hilarious, happy, good for the soul. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less (2017) ventures under the Tuscan sun, doling out episodes in a young man’s journey of self-discovery among eccentrics – chiefly as the assistant and confidante to a wily 92-year-old baroness at her crumbling Italian villa. Recline on the chaise longue, spritz in hand, and enjoy the uplifting hijinks and armchair travel.

In one of the most anticipated novels of the year, Fountain deploys the same astute sensibilities as his 2012 hit Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (which anatomized the jingoism of how war is waged and sold to the public), but set in the political near-future. An unexplained weeping sickness afflicts the nation as an unnamed reality-star-turned-U.S.-president is seeking – with a pro wrestler named Rasputin as running mate – his third term in office. By turns surreal, chilling and hilarious, the blistering inventive novel is being praised as a comic masterpiece; per Kirkus: “The current administration is finally getting the book it deserves.”

Rich people behaving poorly is always a highlight trope of summer books. Enter Jackson, who sets her second novel (after the 2023 bestseller Pineapple Street) on the New England coast. There, an ambitious writer takes up residency in a beach town and infiltrates a group of 30-something friends, who wear their privilege lightly. In this witty ensemble piece, the dysfunctional gang provides fodder for the writer’s next book. By day, Jackson is the editorial director of fiction at Knopf – with authors like Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow) and Kevin Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians) – but here she uses her own experience growing up in a seaside village – that was also home to John Updike – as inspiration. 

This absorbing, teeth-baring satire swept best-of lists (including mine) after it was published in the U.K. last year. (It’s being published in Canada this month.) Spanning the 2008 financial crash and the COVID pandemic, it charts the ambitions and complexities of two entrepreneurial friends (surnames of the title), who first meet at Oxford and launch an innovative energy startup. Smart, gripping and deeply moving, the book has been likened to Great Expectations by way of The Big Short – not to mention that it gives off Industry vibes. And its landscape of investment rounds, tech bros and management consultancy got it longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year (the first work of fiction to make the list in 15 years). You’ll be heavily invested in both their friendship and enterprise. 

Advertising executive Alan spirals into a career crisis after the failure of a big pitch, causing him to rethink his choices and adopt a less-is-more lifestyle – which leads to moving into the backyard playhouse of the family’s suburban Connecticut home. Meanwhile, his socially ambitious wife Vivian is trying to gain the acceptance of the neighbourhood elites known as the Queen Annes – reminiscent of those cinematic Heathers. Library Journal calls the absurd yet compassionate novel, “a worthy post-pandemic successor to great American epics of suburbia and consumer culture, such as Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.” 

Los Angeles and Paris are the glamorous backdrops to this relationship crossroads novel in which a married artist encounters a model from her past, recalling their undeniable chemistry. The slow-burn erotic tale has a dual timeline that flits between the present-day reconnection and their first meeting as young women – exploring the what if? of an illicit romance complicated by race and societal expectations. Like her blockbuster age-gap celebrity romance debut The Idea of You (which became Prime’s record-breaking movie with Anne Hathaway), Lee tells Publishers Weekly her intention with Crash Into Me is to subvert the romance genre’s traditional tropes – not necessarily delivering a happy ending: “I can’t trust you that you’re not going to be crying at the end, but it’s going to be interesting.”

In this winsome cross between a Golden Age crime cozy and behind-the-scenes publishing satire, mystery writer Faye hopes that getting up close and personal with readers at an elaborate Fan Weekend will revive her flagging career. Set on a remote island, the event hosts a series of escalating disasters – including, inevitably, a murder. Told through several points of view, this read is a bibliophile’s delight – skewering the literary world, craven agents and BookTok influencers. Art imitates life: nearly 30 years after her wisecracking breakout debut romance Animal Husbandry (made into Ashley Judd/Hugh Jackman rom-com Someone Like You), critics are hailing the clever light mystery as Zigman’s comeback.

This remarkable nonfiction pageturner has true crime, conspiracy theory and timely history all rolled into one. In an incredible overlapping account of persistence in the face of sexist dismissal and malfeasance, Atlantic staff writer Tiffany unpacks how, in the 1960s and 1970s, Sylvia Meagher, Shirley Martin and Maggie Field – three disparate women, derisively dismissed as mere “housewives” – obsessed over details of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The dogged amateur researchers became key figures in debunking the Warren Commission. “Their impulse to be dissatisfied and aspire to truthfulness, justice and fairness was admirable,” says Tiffany, who sees their entwined stories as illustrative of, “what it means to participate in a democracy daily and actively.”

Celebrity meets nostalgia in this prismatic biographical portrait of George Michael – celebrating the singer’s cultural contributions across music and politics. Woven together are Michael’s creative collaborations with Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder and the story of his coming out during an intensely homophobic period, in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis. Also explored are the consequences of his speaking out against the Iraq War, his legacy of philanthropy, and, most of all, the joy of his enduring hits. British journalist James O’Brien, who conducted a legendary wide-ranging and revealing 1992 radio interview with Michael, praises the book: “Part biography, part social commentary and part love letter, it somehow does full justice to the magnificent man it examines.”